Just A Little Further Down The Road
by GabrielSalutati
Summary: ZUTARA. This is post-war, post-series finale, etc. Spoilers unlikely, but if you haven't watched the finale, CAUTION. This is my first go at something like this, so please don't flame. Lime intended by the end.
1. End Maiko

Like I've said, this is my first attempt at something like this. So I hope you like it, but if you don't, don't kill me... :P

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**End Maiko**

_Ba Sing Se, at nightfall._

_A depressed-looking, young woman is sitting on the steps in front of the Jasmine Dragon Tea Shop, her arms folded across her chest and her eyes covered by a troubled veil. Her back is turned toward the young man with her. A look of worry and pain is etched across his scarred face._

_The tension and uncertainty is hanging in the air. Finally, the young man decides to try to overcome it. Something hadn't been right about her, about THEM, lately, and it was scaring him._

_So he ventured…_

"Are you okay?"

Even as he asked the question, put his hand on her shoulder, felt her twist uncomfortably under his touch, he knew the answer. He also knew the real question he disguised behind it—"Are _we_ okay?"

_What's happened to us_?

She pushed his hand off her shoulder and stood up, keeping her back to him. He knew it was a bad sign.

"Zuko—no. I'm not okay and _we're_ not okay."

"You don't mean that, Mai."

Mai gave a sigh, turning to face her once-happy boyfriend. "No, Zuko. I mean it."

It wasn't sinking in. He wasn't going to let it sink in. Zuko stood there, feeling like the world was backing away from him, and he was set in stone watching it go by.

"This—this—Mai, you told _me_ not to break up with you ever again. And now you're breaking up with me!"

"Zuko. I never said I was."

"Well, are you?"

Mai turned around again silently.

"I heard that," Zuko breathed.

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to."

Another bout of tense silence ensued. The couple remained in their positions as though glued, Mai with her back to Zuko, Zuko looking after her, both their expressions unreadable.

"But why?" Zuko said it so quietly, he hadn't really expected her to hear.

And if she had, Zuko didn't expect her to tell him.

She turned around for the fourth time during their interaction. Now she faced him again. "Zuko. I never meant to tell you this. Even if we do end up…ending, it doesn't mean we can't still…be on good terms. But—" Mai stopped in her tracks. Dimly, Zuko registered that this was the closest he'd ever seen his girlfriend (most likely his ex-girlfriend at this point) to crying.

She was rallying herself, or trying to. "I'm sorry, Zuko," she said, her voice breaking. And when the first tear fell, there was no stopping the rest, not even for someone as hardened as she was. "I just can't do this. Good-bye."

She brushed past him as she made her exit, her face down, her shoulders shaking quietly. Zuko watched her go, turning his head to follow her and straining his eyes to see her long after she'd passed. _It's over_, he thought. _I can't believe it's over_.


	2. End Kataang, Part 1

Okay, Chapter 2. Hope you like it! And hope you have enough sense to tell that if I owned Avatar, I wouldn't be writing FANfiction.

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**End Kataang, Part 1**

In the small Ba Sing Se cottage just outside the Inner Wall, Katara sat at her table, listlessly bending the soup in her bowl with one hand. The other was propping up her cheek, her elbow resting on the table.

_Where is he?_ She stared out the window at the skies. _What was so urgent that he had to just pick up and leave like that_?

They—she and Aang—had been having dinner together, alone. Sokka, Toph, and the rest were out, going through Ba Sing Se, checking out what kind of food they could find in the Earth Kingdom capital. At least, that was the excuse they gave. They knew that Aang and Katara just wanted to enjoy each other's company, and they decided to let the two be.

And then, in the middle of their dinner, one simple knock on the door interrupted everything.

It was a messenger, straight from the Fire Lord's Earth base. Zuko had been spending a lot of time there carrying out his plans to restore the Earth Kingdom to its pre-war glory. He was intent on it, as were Aang and the rest, which was why they were all living in Ba Sing Se for the time being.

The messenger insisted that Aang had to come with him _immediately_, back to the base. "Fire Lord Zuko has a very key piece of information that he believes will be of particular interest to you," the messenger had told Aang plainly. So Aang had gone with him, leaving Katara behind—"Your presence is not required," he'd said to her.

Slightly embittered, Katara had reseated herself at the table, wondering what Zuko had to tell Aang that he couldn't tell her. She thought Zuko had been a little strange of late, anyhow. He'd grown much more recluse, for one thing. Withdrawn. She never saw him anymore, and rumors were flying about his sudden change. The rumors said everything from "His father's gotten his bending back and is coming after him!" to "Mai's broken up with him."

Katara was more inclined to believe the latter. Personally, she could have sworn she'd seen Mai walking through the streets with a vaguely purposeful look on her face, always following the same path—a path, Katara tried not to notice, that crossed the house of a notoriously handsome Earthbender.

The wind picked up sharply outside the cottage, jerking Katara out of her thoughts. She went for the window, watching the trees bend over and the leaves scatter over the ground at fifty miles an hour. _Aang_.

She ran outside to welcome her Airbender home. _The only Airbender in the world, and he's mine_, said her mind absently, heading forward into Aang's waiting arms.

He broke their hug much sooner than she would have expected. When she looked at his face, she saw excitement in droves as she'd never seen before. "Aang," she said curiously, "what did Zuko have to tell you?"

"Katara, you'll never, _never _believe it," panted Aang. "I don't even know if I believe it. I don't want to believe it, because it might not be true—"

"Just tell me what he said," sighed Katara, putting her hands on Aang's shoulders and turning him to face her.

"It's about the Air Nomads," said Aang, so excited that he was barely coherent. "Zuko—Zuko says that I'm not the only one. He said there are some left!"

"Aang, that's great," said Katara sincerely, mentally pretending that she'd never had her most recent thought. "Where are they?"

"That's the killer," said Aang, making an air scooter and wheeling around Katara on it. "They lived out the whole war _underground_, on some tiny Earth Kingdom island, the last place anyone would expect a bunch of Airbenders to be! They got in contact with Zuko when they found out he'd ended the war. And now that they're going to come out of hiding, we can bring the Air Nomads back!"

Katara beamed. "Wow, Aang," she said, marveling. "For you, this is probably the same as the way I'd feel if I found out my mother wasn't really dead."

"I don't know, Katara," said Aang, getting off the air scooter. "I thought my whole _culture_—_all_ my people—was gone. And now, I find out that there _are_ some left after all! I know you loved your mother, but—I mean, you know, this is _so_ big, it's a chance to restore the Airbenders to the way it was before!"

Katara blinked at him, slightly hurt. "Well, if that's how you see it," she said slowly, backing away from him a little.

Aang sobered up a little. "I didn't mean it like that, Katara." He came toward her, closer, and then he reached up and kissed her.

When they broke apart, Aang took Katara's hand in both of his. "Look, Katara. I've got an idea. Zuko wanted me to go visit the Airbenders, kind of as an ambassador. He _implied_ that he wanted me to go alone, but how about this? I'll take you, too. Katara, how would you like to be the first person for a hundred years to meet a bunch of Air Nomads?"


	3. End Kataang, Part 2

Next installment! Hope you like it. :

And yeah. Still writing _fan_fiction. Not _owner-of-avatar_fiction.

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**End Kataang, Part 2**

_A shadow moved over the sea, flying like a bullet shot from a panicked gun._

_The sailors looking up thought it was a cloud, a particularly fast and singular cloud, alone on the starry backdrop of sky._

_But it wasn't a cloud. It was a fifteen-year-old Waterbender girl on a sky bison, urging the beast on, tears streaming from her eyes and trailing behind her like meteors._

_The girl was alone. But, if anyone had been watching earlier that night, they would have noticed that the very same sky bison had been heading in the opposite direction._

_They would have noticed that there had been one other rider on the bison, a bald, thirteen-year-old Airbender monk with determination, excitement and exhilaration written across his face._

—**The day before**—

"Wait. Aang, _where_ are you going again?"

That had to have been the fifth time Sokka had asked Aang that very question, and Aang had answered the same way every time: incoherently.

"Oh-Sokka-you-just-wait-haven't-I-told-you-already-Zuko-found-some-Airbenders-who've-been-hiding-somewhere-and-'tara-and-I-are-going-to-go-meet-them."

Toph and Sokka were sitting on the front steps outside the small cottage they'd been living in, watching (or, in Toph's case, feeling) Aang and Katara rush around, throwing bundles of clothes and food onto Appa's saddle—used so often in the past, hardly ever now.

"Sokka, how could you not have caught that? He's said the exact same thing twenty times!" exclaimed Toph, throwing her arms out to the side.

"That's exactly _why_ I haven't been able to catch that! He says the same thing every time I ask! I didn't get it the first time, and I don't get it now."

Katara chuckled. "Slow down, Aang. My oh-so-intelligent brother is having problems understanding you."

"Okay. I'll shorten it to three words," consented Aang, dropping the package of lychees he was carrying and air-scootering over to Sokka. Getting right in his face, he enunciated,

"Go—ask—Zuko."

Then Aang picked the lychees up and backflipped through the air, landing neatly on Appa's head as only an Airbender could. Katara and Toph were still laughing at Aang's jibe at Sokka, but Aang was too excited even for that.

"Katara, come on," he said impatiently, flicking Appa's reins, "those Airbenders aren't going to be waiting forever."

"Who's to say that? They waited out the entire war," teased Katara, scaling up Appa's leg and climbing into the saddle.

"Don't say things like that, Katara."

_Now he can make jokes and no one else can_, Katara found her mind saying irritably. She shook the thoughts out of her head as best she could, and took the hand he offered her. As he pulled her up, she caught a glimpse of the determined fire of controlled joy in his eyes.

- - - - -

"Aang, I see an island," Katara remarked tiredly from the saddle.

They had been flying for hours. The sea was monotonous and clear blue. The best entertainment Katara had been able to come up with was watching their shadow whiz by over the water.

"Oh, God, Katara, I see it too," he breathed. "Could that—could that be it?"

Katara rummaged through their sacks for their map. Zuko had specifically marked out the island's location on it, circled the tiny island in the biggest red circle that was sensible. After a few seconds of frenzied searching, she pulled it out of the lychee package.

"Aang, why was the map in—"

Katara let the question die on her lips. It was obvious that Aang wasn't going to listen; she couldn't tell whether it was because of the way he snatched the map right out of her hand or the zoned look he had in his eyes when she spoke to him.

"_Yes_, Katara, that's the island," said Aang, going incoherent again with sheer excitement. "Come on, Appa, let's go!"

As Aang urged the bison onward, Katara told herself that she felt just as excited as Aang did about meeting the Air Nomads. She told herself that here she was, about to be the first non-Airbender to see these living relics of the past. But she couldn't shake the feeling that something was going to go wrong on this mission.

Well, not _precisely_ the mission—she knew they were going to find the Airbenders all right. That wasn't why she was unsettled. _Something more personal is going to happen_, said her intuition. _Aang is going to be surrounded by people of his own culture. Hmm, what could happen now_?

_Shut up_.

Outside Katara's mind, Appa touched down lightly on the island. But even before Appa landed, Aang was on the ground and running. He was running pretty fast for someone who didn't really know where he was headed, Katara remarked to herself.

As soon as she jumped off Appa and started running to catch up with him, Aang stopped. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, "Hello?"

The silence that greeted him was eerie, mysterious, in a way Aang couldn't explain. It reassured him, somehow, that the Airbenders really were there; it was something in the way the quiet rang, like it concealed something. Oh, he knew they'd heard him. He'd projected his voice with a little Airbending. Now, to get them out…

"I'm Avatar Aang, and I've been told that some Air Nomads remain here, on this island," he went on.

Then, so suddenly that there was no time for him to defend himself, two miniature pyramids of earth shot up from the ground and grabbed Aang by the wrists, forcing him down and backward. Katara, who had just about caught up to Aang by then, gasped, screamed, and jumped back, instinctively reaching her hand to her water skin.

But Aang, using his own Earthbending, broke the pyramids, shot upright, and assumed an Earthbending stance. "Who's there?" he demanded.

"I am," said a small voice.

Then a young girl who looked like she could have been Toph's twin (though, Aang noted, the girl wasn't blind) came into view.

"I'm the new Earthbender guide," she said quietly. "I protect the Air Nomads." She gave Aang a look-over. "You are Avatar Aang."

"Yes," said Aang, almost impatiently. "I am."

"I assume you want to see your people. I will bring them to you. We have been told you might come soon."

Aang bowed to her. "Thank you."

The Earthbender's eye caught Katara, standing some distance behind Aang and still clutching her water skin. "The Waterbender can be trusted, Avatar?"

"Yes," he said hurriedly. Katara doubted he'd even heard the question, but the girl let it go. She had started to Earthbend.

She knelt on the ground and put her hand to it, and Aang knew she was using subterranean sight. After a few seconds, she jumped back to her feet and into a bending stance. Several quick strikes, hard stomps, and agile twists later, a large platform of earth was cleared away, and a second platform underneath it was ascending into view.

On it stood about seventy or eighty Air Nomads, rising out of the ground that hid them so uncomfortably, but so well.

_I'm home_, thought Aang as he watched them coming. _It doesn't matter where on Earth I physically am. I'm home_.

His eyes traveled over his new family. Tall, short, benders all, Aang couldn't help realizing that most of them were elderly. Half of them could have been the age of the White Lotus masters he'd been told about.

So when he hit upon the only young face he saw, he stuck to it immediately.

It was a girl. She might have been thirteen or fourteen, about his own age. And she was smiling right at him.

The young Air Nomad girl was pretty, tall, and in love at first sight with Aang. He was the first male Airbender she'd seen that was less than five years away from her in age. And she liked it.

Aang liked it.

Katara saw, knew, and hated it.

- - - - -

She didn't find out the girl Air Nomad's name that night, nor would she for a while. She didn't mesh into the Airbenders' tightly knit circle when she was at last introduced to them, nor did she during their dinner celebration, as they were preoccupied almost obsessively with Aang and welcoming him into their arms.

But Aang's eyes were only for the young female Airbender, and hers were for him. Katara knew that Aang had left behind his old world and stepped into hers.

He was in her world, as surely as his hand was in hers.

That was when Katara stood up and left. It was the middle of dinner, and everyone was eating and singing and laughing and celebrating—the Air Nomads, the Earthbender guide girl, and Aang and his new love, of course. Everyone but Katara.

No one said anything when she rose from her seat and walked away silently. Nobody had noticed her, even though she had been sitting pretty much in the middle of everything.

She slid away from it all, out to where they'd left Appa. He had been well waited upon, with good hay out for him to eat, but he was unattended now and he snacked in solitude.

Katara jumped onto his head and leaned down to his ear. "Yip, yip," she whispered.

He beat his tail and lifted into the sky, somewhat regretful that he had to leave his hay behind.

Tears coursed down Katara's face.

A/N: It's longer than the other chapters, I know, but again. I hope you like it.


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